


this loneliness won't last

by more_than_melody



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene, Royai - Freeform, my quarantine my coping mechanism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:07:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29946300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/more_than_melody/pseuds/more_than_melody
Summary: Roy delivers some flowers.
Relationships: Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Comments: 9
Kudos: 57





	this loneliness won't last

  
  


_And all this too shall pass_

_this loneliness won't last for long_

  
  


_Gale Song – the Lumineers_

* * *

  
  


_“Lieutenant!”_

He pounds his fist against the door of the apartment. The paint is peeling in places, showing signs of neglect, the exterior light overhead flickering haphazardly. Not for the first time he wishes she had picked a place closer to where he lives – he dislikes having her so far away, especially now that they rarely see each other at work.

_It's important we don't seem too close_ , she had said. As though physical distance is indicative of emotional distance.

“Lieutenant, open the door!”

It is harder than he expected to keep his voice sounding even remotely calm. He wants to kick down the door – something has happened, he is absolutely certain of it. That tone in her voice on the phone, the momentary pause -

Then the doorknob rattles and a few moments later the object of his frustrations opens inward revealing his Lieutenant, wearing a look of surprise on her face and a heavy black sweater. Her hair is wet from the shower, twisted over one shoulder.

The relief hits him and his knees go weak – he braces himself with one hand against the door frame. She's here and still awake – it's a ridiculous hour and he knows it. Nearly midnight is not the time to be paying house calls but the game is up now – they haven't fooled anyone.

For a split second he thinks he sees some of that same relief in her eyes at the sight of him.

“Colonel!”

“You're alright,” he says, still heavy with relief.

Her expression undergoes several very swift transformations, so quickly he isn't entirely sure what he has seen before she regains her composure. “Sir, what are you doing here?”

There is such emphasis on the _sir_ this time.

“On the phone it sounded like -” He falters.

It is never her voice that betrays her – except that moment of hesitation on the phone earlier - but it isn't for nothing that the two of them have lived and worked side by side for the better part of thirteen years. The set of her mouth and the way she folds her arms, palm to elbow across her chest is all he needs to pick up on her anxiety.

Most days he knows how to comfort her. It has taken years of practice – she does not let people in easily, but he is nothing if not patient. Most days, he knows how to calm her after a nightmare, how to massage the muscles at the base of her spine, or beneath her shoulder blades in a way that releases tension.

But the way she is holding herself, shoulders tensed up and arms folded in, tells him she does not want to be touched by anyone just now.

“May I come in?” he asks. He always asks.

“I don't think that's a good idea,” she says, but she stands aside to let him in anyway.

He steps past her into her apartment, scanning the room for anything that might indicate trouble. Not that he would be able to tell, he realizes. This is the first time he has visited her apartment since they relocated to Central.

Her last apartment, in East City. That he was familiar with.

She appears at his side. This close he can smell the soap from her shower, floral and heady and very fresh. It has only been a few weeks since her transfer but that scent is like the last breath of a dying man to him.

“Sir, you shouldn't be here.” Her voice is firm, her expression neutral, but the fear is still there.

“What happened?” he asks. “You sounded -” She sounded so upset on the phone, even in the absence of words.

She meets his eyes and there is a silent warning there.

And a cut on her cheek, thin and fresh. It was not there that morning when they had passed in the hall.

He almost reaches out to touch it but the way she is holding herself still tells him not to. Tearing his eyes away from hers he scans the apartment again. They haven't been in Central _that_ long but even he has managed to settle into his living space better than she has, her apartment still stacked with boxes. It's almost as though she does not want to settle in.

_It's just an apartment_ , she's told him before. _It's not my home._

Hayate is watching them from his position curled up on the sofa, clearly unbothered by the intrusion. Roy Mustang is not new to him.

Her heavy black coat is draped over the back of a kitchen chair, her shoes on the floor beneath it, lying where she kicked them off.

“Are you going somewhere?” he asks. She is one to hang her coat in the closet, not leave it out like this.

“No,” she says, and he is surprised by the spark of anger in her voice. “I'm not going anywhere.”

She has promised him that much before.

_whispered it in his ear actually, her arms tightly around him and their legs entwined_

He shoves that thought aside. Clearly he's missed her – he blames the shampoo for that. She smells distracting and the relief at seeing her is overwhelming -

“Well then -” he starts, but he doesn't get a chance to finish.

“You should be, though,” she snaps, cutting him off. “You have to leave before -” She bites off the end of the sentence sharply.

“Before what?”

In the split second she composes herself and her voice is smooth and calm when she answers.

“Before it gets too dark.”

“Lieutenant, it's already quarter to midnight,” he says, tugging at his hair, letting out a strangled laugh. What an absolutely ridiculous thing for her to say. “The dark is the least of my worries.”

She purses her lips in that way that he has always found infuriating. It's reassuring, somehow, the familiarity of that expression.

“What happened?” he asks again softly and she just shakes her head, the tiniest of movements. As though they are being watched.

Frustrated he shoves his hands into his pockets. There's something in one of them.

“I forgot,” he says, pulling a handful of crumpled flowers from one large pocket. The last hour stuffed in his pocket and trapped by his seat belt in the car has not been kind to them.

Still, these forlorn flowers bring a small smile to her face.

He would like to make her smile like that more often.

“I thought I told you I don't have a vase,” she says. “Sir.” The title feels like such an afterthought – he likes that too.

She retrieves a cup from the kitchen and places the flowers in it on the table, alongside stacks of files and a half finished cup of coffee, the cream coalesced on the top from sitting out all day.

They have reached a stalemate, he realizes, when she turns her gaze back toward him. It's not the first time – that's what they get for both being so stubborn. Neither of them is inclined to give in.

_though there are other forms of surrender that have come more easily to them in the past_

She sighs, tucking an errant strand of hair back behind her ear. “Would you like some tea?” she asks after a long minute as though she has come to the same conclusion that he has. He can't leave until he knows she's okay, and she won't tell him what has happened.

“If you insist,” he says.

She fills the tea kettle and gathers the dirty cup from the table, pushing aside several stacks of paperwork. “You can take your coat off, if you'd like,” she says, and he knows that is all the invitation he is going to get. He complies, draping coat and scarf over the empty kitchen chair. She pulls out two clean mugs and measures out tea leaves.

He almost moves to wash the dishes in her sink. The look she gives him – as though she knows exactly what he's thinking – tells him the gesture would be unwelcome. There is something too casual about it in this moment, a sort of domestic intimacy that their lives these days have so little of.

So he sits at the table and waits instead.

He looks over at the papers she has been going over - none of it seems to be work related. There's an article comparing several new models of rifles on the top, a few cutout newspaper clippings and sheets and sheets of what looks like Falman's tidy handwriting. Half tucked into the pile toward the bottom is a half finished crossword puzzle.

How strange this all feels, the forced distance between them. It has been busy weeks since they arrived in Central and with her in the office every morning he has not noticed, quite so much, the changes. The last time he was in her apartment – her old apartment, that is - was the night they'd heard about Hughes.

_the touch of her hands in the dark, her fists in his hair, the soft bite of her mouth on his shoulder_

That memory doesn't need any examining, not presently, at least.

When the tea is ready she settles into the chair across from him, sighing heavily and rolling her shoulders as though to relieve tension.

How many times have they found themselves like this, he wonders, seated opposite each other so as not to touch, these same mugs in their hands?

Beneath the table her foot brushes against his leg, like a line of fire along his calf.

He waits for his tea to cool but she takes a scalding sip, and when she sets the mug down again her hands are trembling – just the slightest movement of her fingers against the table before she folds them together.

“How are you holding up?” she asks. She's asking more than she's asking with that question but he answers it in the most straightforward way possible.

“Busier than I'd like,” he grumbles. “You'd think I would get more done, without you there to distract me.”

“Good to know you don't just slack off when I'm around,” she says, hiding her smile behind her mug.

“Of course not.”

She shrugs. “You never know,” she says. “It's been a while since we spent this much time apart.”

“Don't remind me.” She tilts her head and her hair falls over her shoulder. A whiff of jasmine.

“Why haven't you unpacked?” he asks, forcing himself to focus, looking around again at the boxes.

“I've been busy,” she says, looking down at the cup in her hands. “We've had plenty to do since we got here.”

That's certainly true. And yet -

_she has never really known somewhere that was home, moving from place to place after the end of childhood without really taking root, as though she didn't deserve a home of her own_

He swallows hard.

“Have you been doing anything but working?” he asks. He doesn't expect her to say yes – he hasn't been either unless you count a visit to see his aunt. He's trying to find a way out of this situation but so far he's coming up short.

“Not much,” she admits. “Although, Rebecca called last weekend.”

“How is she?”

“Oh, just fine. Bored, I think, based on what she had to say. She left a date early to call me and complain about it.”

“I'm beginning to think that's just how she is,” he says. “She's just as bad as Havoc.”

They both laugh, the sound small and thin. It's something at least.

“She's settled down a little,” Riza says. “Since the academy, at least. But she has always been impatient and hard to please.”

The only difference he can see is that Riza is incredibly patient. Why else would she still be put up with him? She's certainly hard to please – not that he hasn't had years of practice. He gets it right once and a while.

He pulls the crossword puzzle out of the stack of papers. “You didn't finish this one,” he says. There are only a handful of words filled in.

“Like I said, I've been busy.”

“Do you mind?”

“Not at all.” She hands him a pencil, their fingers not quite touching. Silence hangs between them for a while as they sip at their tea and he looks over the crossword. The night feels heavy pressed against the windows of her apartment, shadows thick in the corners between unpacked boxes. There's a tension in the air that says it's going to rain soon.

  
  


  
  


“Should I be worried?” he asks, looking up at her. The tea is gone, empty mugs between them on the table. He will be anyway.

“It's not me I'm worried about,” she says, voice soft but weighted.

“Oh.” His voice seems small in the vacuum. He hasn't considered that this hostage situation works two ways, both of them kept in line as a prisoner for the others good behavior.

There is no further sound except for the soft whuffing sighs of Hayate.

“You should go,” she says at last.

“I suppose I should.” It's late – he doesn't check his watch because it doesn't really matter to him – but she looks tired. She needs sleep, even if he would be happy to stay up all night talking to her. How he has missed the sound of her voice, punctuating long days in the office.

The sound of the chair legs scraping tile floor is too loud, the light of the kitchen too harsh. The refrigerator groans, echoing his joints as he stands.

“I'm too old for this,” he grumbles.

“Don't let Armstrong hear you say that.”

“Not a chance,” he says. “The last thing I need is to hear him waxing poetic about the vigours of youth.”

“I'm sure it would be quite the sight.”

Silence again. The shadows around them seem to stretch and shiver, a trick of the flickering light. Hayate is not bothered – he is made of sterner stuff than either of them it seems.

“Are you going to be okay?” he asks.

She just meets his eyes, like _I can't promise you that. “_ We've had plenty of later nights than this, sir,” she says. “I'll be fine.”

As though a strong cup of coffee is the cure for their problems. Oh, she is infuriating sometimes, but he loves her for it.

How he wishes they had never come to Central at that moment – and not just because his team has been separated, or because of the threads of conspiracy that are drawing tightly around them like a noose.

In East City, where no one watched them, they could have fallen asleep, side by side, hip to hip, the sound of her breathing soothing like the lap of sea upon the shore. He's had more sleepless nights since the transfer than he can count. Caffeine is not a cure all, no matter what she says.

_but she can do more than calm his nightmares, she's proven that before_

He does not want to brush his hand against her shoulder as he says goodbye, he wants to fold her into his arms and not let go.

Instead he pulls his jacket on, armoring up to go back out into the night.

She follows him to the door, arms folded in front of her, shoulders hunched, her own sort of armor. In the light over the apartment door she looks washed out, worn down, the fluorescents stripping away color.

He teeters on the threshold for a moment, struggling with the urge to hold her, to kiss her hair and her cheeks and

_oh, does he remember the taste of her mouth_

“Thank you for the tea,” he says.

She reaches out and takes his hand in both of hers, running her thumb lightly over the scars there, the faint ridges just beneath his knuckles. It's as though she has decided she no longer cares who is watching. Or perhaps it is only to him that this feels significant.

Everything about her feels significant.

“Thank you for checking in,” she says. “You can just call next time.”

Their last phone call did nothing to reassure him but he nods anyway.

He feels braver with his hand in hers, as though she's giving him permission. He reaches out with his other hand, the one that is not scarred, and brushes her hair back from her shoulder, feeling briefly the soft fabric of sweater, allowing one finger to graze against her jaw.

She drops his hand as though it's a live wire.

“Goodnight, sir.”

There's a hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth. He resists the urge to kiss her there.

“Lieutenant.”

Down the stairs he goes, before she can shut the door behind him. As always, seeing her has made him feel better – he is less certain that he helped to soothe her fears at all.

He steps out into the street where the light flickers over his parked car. It is starting to rain, cold and sharp on his skin. In the distance, thunder rumbles, slow and ponderous, herald of a long night spent sleepless in his own bed.

He fumbles with his car keys and can't resist one look back.

There she is in the second floor window, silhouetted against the kitchen lights, a lighthouse in the storm. He hopes she'll still be there when the storm breaks.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This has been in my drafts for months and I keep picking at it but I need to stop doing that so I guess it's finished now.


End file.
